The freedom for musicians who already are deeply part of the independent medium can be found in their side projects, their attempts to explore different genres and styles. Some of them easily prove it in a kind of mainstream way (Radiohead) or more closely and subtly (The Walkmen), knowing that it is especially complicated to be able to propose something unexpectable, in opposition to a simple extension of the art they fit in. Grails’ and Lilacs & Champagne’s Emil Amos still goes on with Holy Sons, his own lo-fi project he has been taking care of for almost ten years. And his new album, The Fact Facer, contains every part of his tunes that sounds like an inner system, an emancipation of the bands he is playing with; as gray as intense, the record takes us towards the ultimate passage between life and forgiveness, between rationalism and madness, while sharing the depressive folk tones we will all be taken with.

The album is made of cold and clean, dismantling and sometimes acoustic tones (psychedelic impulses on Line Me Back Up, All Too Free), often close to the limit of electronic Arab Strap-like tunes (Selfish Thoughts). Freed from his creative chains but soon recaptured by a sneaky and artistic omnipotent demon, Emil Amos invokes transcendent stories that sound like a long and painful walk to the edge of madness (Long Days), or intimate, poignant and subversive delusions (Back Down to the Tombs) which inexorably possess each listener, decimating all of them to wrap them into its claws. The fearless composer opens the doors to his nocturnal world, a place of dark forests and melody in which a murmur calls for home to protect our souls and share all we can with them. Symbolized by the fertile ground of improvisation the artist endlessly creates, such a so-called tendency to make unexpected and incredible arrangements turns the LP into a source of information and condense, amazing tracks, or torn pieces of musical flesh waiting to be brought back together to help rebuild our broken hearts. Then, as the musician achieves his creative canvas thanks to the magnificent and soft song The Fact Facer, one remains impressed by his unclassifiable definition of folk music, his incomparable gift of himself to search for perfection into mental illness.

Thanks to this album, Emil Amos has decided to deprive himself of his own experience and let it flow like a current of tears hydrating the ghostly faces of his life. By remaining in the darkest recesses of his music, stretching the thread of his art to better cut it, he offers us a collection of long sharp blades, a tangle of furiously contained and sublime madness. While the pale faces of patients ready to be locked up suddenly become supplicant and experiencing the struggle between peace and insanity, The Fact Facer shows several ways to escape from a daily, boring life, each depending on the type of listening one will provide to tame it. Because it is another primary strength of the ultimate, difficult and feverish melancholy that takes every one of us as we truly are, without forcing us to follow a guideline but, as Eels‘s remarkable LP Electro-Shock Blues, opening an endless field of possibilities to feel safer. Thus, redemption and sharing, on stage or simply by hearing the songs on our own, can be reached only by passing through an ephemeral bridge to find a way out, and crossing it, while focusing on oneself, to see one’s personal and pure reflection.

The Fact Facer is a delicate and complex LP. It is a bittersweet, close to the edge but electrifying and deeply moving drama.

There are many ways of defining nostalgia. Whatever people say, it is not only about wishes to go back to our early moments, contemplate our past and feel regrets, or a necessary but painful look backwards while thinking about it. Musically, it can be considered under different angles, on many levels. Musically speaking, either one remembers prosperous and optimistic eras (the 80’s for some of us, the 90’s for others), or one finds inspiration, modernizes it and creates brand new atmospheres and artistic horizons around it. US duet Orcas are a part of this second meaning of the word. Their brand new album, Yearling, is a seducive and moving summit of aerial melancholy, bringing English cold wave creations back to life and looking forward at the same time, without remaining consensual but constantly enlightening their work.

Always standing between aerial instants and rhythmically slow, subtle ballads, Benoît Pioulard and Rafael Anton Irisarri spin a sensitive, original web and decorate their scintillating and precisely drawn tune armours with dark and shining curtains. From astonishing synths waves (Petrichor, Selah) to mesmerizing Cocteau Twins-influenced tones (Half Light) or This Mortal Coil-like moods (Capilllaries), they travel through soft and intimate folk sounds, rocking guitars and slow, hypnotizing drums, arranging and modifying keyboards (An Absolute) or scratched and eroded electro loops (Filament). Orcas’ music is this: a sensitive, never brutal introduction of all instruments to find out their most precious essence, their most intense echo, and naturally mix them to create more than a simple collection of songs. They aim to build a self-sufficient world made of atoms and living cells around us, as quiet as an aquatic and peaceful chant (Tell).

Thus, what first seems obvious is finally not so easy to discover. Yearling is a powerful mixture of exceptional tracks, an impressive painting made of shapes and pastels, shadows and dark lights. Vocals are calling us to open the door to an unknown dimension and visit different rooms. One has to watch delicate veils on the walls, fires in grates, and windows letting us look at events we cannot control and simply admire. As intense and eternal as closed-on-itself and ephemeral, the record stands for the human psyche, nocturnal and daily dreams, wanderings of our souls as we need to hide into a well-deserved comfort. Every element is important here, caught, carved and exhibited in front of our eyes and ears. Listening to Orcas’ songs means seeing and believing; or, at least, accepting to stop and admire all these subdued lights, these rays of warm and blinding phosphorescent brightness; or, more precisely, reading the pages of secret diaries that the composers offer to each human being in order to help them progress and get impregnated with experience and emotions. Such a magic moment becomes a complete osmosis between us and the creators, but also, between ourselves as a single entity, or an entire and reassuring symbiosis guiding us to the way out.

Orcas‘ new LP is a remarkably deep and fascinating, black and white masterpiece.

Digging into Arc Iris’ music means, in the first place, accepting not to know where you are. Like on the colorful album cover, and all its drawings reminding us of a Rorschach test, it can be considered and appreciated through many different views, as songs in this masterpiece constantly move, get reinvented, or change. Little by little, what seems to be a musical delirium or an out-of-control fever appears to be a complex artwork leading to pure hearing pleasure. Arc Iris has to be listened to as well as stared at, as it inspires continuous pictures uniting in a total, wonderful and fascinating coherence, proving a real composing and arranging talent. One has not been confronted to such a passionate phenomenon since, well, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon.

Such a melodic diversity can be heard from the first tones of Money Gnomes, a perfect meeting between country music and improbable, impromptu waltz rhythms. This masterful way of starting a magnificent record introduces us to a more global vision of what is about to happen, as it is generously and remarkably offered to us. One goes from songs inspired by 1960’s musicals (Lost On Me), My Brightest Diamond-like atmospheres (Canadian Cowboy) or cabaret tunes (Singing So Sweetly, Swimming). Because it is what the album sounds and looks like: a frenzy and moving theater play, a timeless variety show everyone is invited to. Brass, piano and drums are mixed together, breaking, cracking, interlacing to take the shape of a burning and captivating magma. This original travel to forgotten eras passes through each harmony, taking us to the second half of the 20th century (Ditch is a sublime slow track with admirable strings), total and ecstatic experiments (Honor Of The Rainbows I and II are incredible), old-school folk music right from the most deserted US landscapes (Powder) or an overdriven but sweet and mesmerizing lullaby (Might I Deserve To Have A Dream). It is thus hard to define Arc Iris’ first LP, as it synthesizes so many genres, manipulates, absorbs and models them to carve fantastic sculptures that can be touched and molded by the artist herself or the listener’s imagination. This exceptional sharing is what makes the experience pure and interesting; more than only performing, the musician gives us a material to create our own visions, as getting deeper into each song allows us to infinitely and personally take a part in the creative process.

On such an uncommon harmony soil, Jocie Adams’ vocals are innocently wandering, staring at every detail and feeling pleased in front of these sugary and perfumed universes surrounding them; the world is a fairytale, but also, the reflection of an inner vision of a disavowed reality ready to be touched and grown more attractive. Her vibrating, breathtaking and perfectly tuned singing spreads its precious waves, draws multicolored lines on black and sad screens. She is moving each one of us to tears as we enter her enlightened and shining labyrinth, tearing up all grey and disincarnate walls to bring exquisite and realistic pictures to life. The hand that carries all necessary brushes is straight and self-assured, guiding them to choose the right pastel to illustrate the everlasting pleasure that glows all around us. Arc Iris is an incredible innocent wind, a delicate meal that stimulates all senses and brings stars and tears to our eyes. With only one album, the artist is creating what can be called modern psychedelic music, so much it is like a powerful but harmless psychotropic drug. It is a ray of light running through our veins and bodies to make us aware of everything we can think or feel, a fantastic point of view about reality in its right place, as we all understand that these songs will help us in the future by holding our hands and comfort us, day after day.

There are few words to describe Arc Iris‘ music. The best thing to do is listen to it as soon as possible. No doubt that no one will escape from it unharmed.

All those of us who are, well, between 30 and 40 years old, like to hear songs reminding us of the glorious 70’s ; they still are a mix of innocence and thoughts of the ‘flower power’ allowing us to forget about the actual social crises by putting our parents’ ideals back on track. A kind of blessed time, in a way, that now has been corrupted by the duet-from-hell Reagan and Thatcher (among others). Fortunately, many nowadays artists still take us back to this particular decade when all the most beautiful pages of musical history have been written and still influence the forecoming years by desperately hanging on them. Amen Dunes’ new album is a testimony of echoing folk as well as memories of purity. It is a synthetic pill one has to constantly swallow to be cured.

Letting go of his spontaneous improvisations, the same ones that are typical of the composer’s style, Damon McMahon (Amen Dunes’ real name) is getting closer to his abilities and ways to mix acoustic tones with extreme psychedelia (Lonely Richard). Thus helped by two members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, he is giving the best of himself through ethereal movements sounding like true aerial acrobatics (Sixteen, Rocket Flare) or country-like currents enlightened by resonant electrical discharges (Lilac In Hand, Everybody Is Crazy), then exhibiting a rough and bitter tune bareness (I Know Myself). Dry and wild harmony is a straight human and intuitive, admirably valued impulse that discrete and palpitating choirs instantly make up. These same heartbeats shine all through the tracks, texturing them like blood veins one can see through thin and pale skin (Green Eyes, Love); such a drawing gets closer to the composer’s incandescent limits of creation, his wish to send his art far into darker and faster landscapes (I Can’t Dig It). Endlessly asking about his deliberate need to stop and organize his always lively songwriting, Amen Dunes hides his inner demons to let them appear one by one as they are hiding behind smoke and mist screens.

As moving as Neil Young’s or Art Garfunkel’s, vocals are a perpetual continuation of Damon McMahon’s physical shape. His haunted and piercing look troubles and fascinates us before becoming permissive as his burning singing lights up fire all around us, warming the atmosphere of nameless forests we are invited to. The artist tells us, thanks to 11 personal and confidential tracks, about his own vision of love and how it has to immediately be maintained through the years. Lost in the other’s eyes, he has to go deep into his own limits to let his emotions grow, be ready for relational frontiers and compromises, but, above all, reveal his true nature to sew on the necessary canvas and dreamcatcher that will let him protect his sensations. Litanies then become real invocations to unknown forces and deities, penetrating our souls as we abandon all strength to plunge into happiness, as it will never be short-lived again. Love is a daily prayer, a comfort in moments of doubt. It is a shining piece of glass lost on the side of the road and that we see from far away, knowing that it can be beautiful and transparent, but also, sharp and deadly. One has to handle it with care to see it glow.

Love will be out on May 13; no need to tell you to go for it then. No excuse if you don’t. Amen Dunes‘ new album is one of the brightest diamonds of all actual profound records.

If you are reading this review and listening to the record at the same time, the best thing to do is lay down, switch the lights off and close your eyes. Of course, all of this looks like a cliché, but, on the contrary, it is what comes closer to the perfect state of mind before entering Canadian musician Barzin’s new album, so much it inspires magnificent and intimate, sensitive and enlightened mental images.

The songwriter’s art of folk is immediately fascinating ; soft, serene strings and acoustic guitars (Stealing Beauty), piano and vocals, both valued with a delicate delay effect boosting each track of the record (Fake It ‘Til You Make It), sweet and close-to-silence drums… Each instrument is amazingly and perfectly mixed, in a constant need of harmonizing all atmospheres and creating straight sensations. One shivers while listening to such a melodic humility, a regular attention given not to add too many useless arrangements. On such a strong basis, Barzin’s unique, misty and crystal-clear voice embraces instead of leading, and puts a living and poetic, perceptible and protective veil on this moving sound jewelry. Thus, it is still fragile, but strengthened with clever brass and xylophone shining all through the tracks. The last song of the LP, It’s Hard To Love Blindly, perfectly exposes such a precariousness: it remains unsettled, waiting, unachieved and ready to be taken away by each listener.

While being under such a perceptible shield, we are watching, from the upper level of a building with a view on the whole city, rain falling from a grey sky, opening and pouring its drops down on people perpetually running in the streets. Without looking superior in this twilight environment, where a few lights are sometimes shining, we contemplate citizens who never stop and take time to look around. Thanks to Barzin’s music, we suddenly realize that our individualism and continuous need to prove that we are able to have our own personality, strengths and weaknesses, are factual soul disorders . As the musician literally shows himself to us, we all can, thanks to him, feel alive and powerful, at least for the time being, before feeling melancholy (this weird brain disease that lonely people always suffer from) again. But with such a magnificent record, we don’t feel ashamed, whatever others may say. These impressive songs, as for any Barzin album, take us further into an eternal and necessary meditative state of mind.

If only one sentence has to be told to define all multiple effects created by To Live Alone In That Long Summer, it would surely by this one: as silence comes to the end of these musical diamonds, one will feel as lost as rested. Then, it is time to press Play again, and enjoy another moment on our own.

Sometimes, a few instruments and a lot of inspiration are enough to compose a great album. Whatever material methods or needs you use for it, simplicity often is a source of creative and musical intensity. Andrea Schroeder’s second record is soaking one’s skin with an oil-like blackness, a blank and creepy city atmosphere, but also an immediately bewitching work.

While listening to all folk and rock ten tracks of the LP, one first hears an ubiquitous and continuous harmony basis: acoustic guitars, strings, drums and accordion. Always inverting their mutual places in order to be valued from one song to another (strings on Dead Man’s Eyes, accordion on Until The End, guitars on The Rattlesnake and even piano on The Spider), they all support an artist who is about to faint because of what she is living and going through; her daily troubles, her fears and revelations. This palpable and tactile structure anxiously and feverishly stands for the tunes’ tension and distortion, as Larsen effects wrap around offbeat percussions, taking their own language to answer the singer’s tones expressing her deepest nightmares.

Andrea Schroeder’s vocals are a perfect female version of Lou Reed and Nick Cave’s own timbres, in her ability to sing as well as revealing her fears and phobias. Deep and low-registered, damaged by everlasting haunting dizzy spells, it helps her exposing her fright, loathing and regrets. She invites us to touch rough grey concrete walls in empty streets where garbage has been dumped disrespectfully (Ghosts Of Berlin). She understands her inner madness, due to an arachnid poison running through her brain and body (The Spider) before trying to find a peaceful moment she has deserved and expected (Walk Into The Silence). Possessed by the spirits of the places she is traveling through, becoming a receptacle for disappeared souls, she undergoes these intrusions in herself as inspiration, even if that means being eternally insane. Hurt by all these experiences, her voice is painful but expressive. One then goes into her arms to feel her cold body and let this inner ice make one comfortably numb.

Where The Wild Oceans End is staggering and splendid, essential and painful, traumatic and purifying; an eternal suffering aiming to purgatory and deliverance.

Something weird is floating in Joy Valencia’s songs; something like a deep and unrecognizable scent of eternity, an immediate urge to travel through all musical worlds in order not to be considered as a single pop, or rock, or any kind of music representative. She has this particular ability to destabilize as well as lose herself (and ourselves at the same time), going from one melodic genre to another by keeping every original part of each one of them; a capacity to mesmerize every listener, and invite one to contemplate a perpetually rotating universe. Her songs are like a spiritual and inner Ouroboros, patiently waiting for the right moment to bite and inject its venom to bewitch and anesthetize its preys.

The most impressive part of these tracks (which have been recorded in the past 3 years) is an amazing way of proving that Joy Valencia always takes risks while digging each kind of songs to get their fresher and newest sources of pleasure. From the delicate sounds of a modern lullaby (Stars) to pop and big-band tunes on Babydoll, from crazy folk moods on Eraser Man to sensual blue notes on Wallet, the singer and songwriter enjoys hiding mysterious harmony treasures from their original style, radically turning them into astonishing artistic roots and chants. One can then hear angelic choirs, sweet and quiet moments, sugary and delicious atmospheres. Little by little, the artist tends to go further all limits, as well as her own manner of composing.

But the harmonization of these different tracks, which is not obvious in the first place, is revealed through a constantly evolving red thread: her voice, fascinating because of its multiplicity, energy, peace and softness. Oscillating between fun and melancholy, it helps the singer tell us stories of laughter and tears through her eyes and heart. Child-like then adult, her singing becomes a symbol of the artist’s inner frontier between innocence and experience, of an eternal look towards dream and reality, where a young girl can stand in front of an unpredictable predator (Babydoll/ Don’t Wake The Lion) without revealing which one of them is about to win. And such a magnificent emotional amplitude that Joy Valencia gives us thanks to her pieces of music is as moving as generously shared with her audience, as deeply felt as delightful.

Now, one is expecting a real long-length record from such a remarkable composer. Even if this particular collection of tunes already is a priceless gift.

Australian Band The Grapes’ (aka. Sherry Rich and Ashley Naylor) new album has been awaited for 15 long years. Both working on side projects, and maybe needing some time to give a follow-up to their 1999 eponymous album, the duet has been patiently hiding before coming back; but a strong wish to get on the road again as a 2-headed entity has happened, and therefore is a living proof of the entire creative liberty that can be heard while listening to Western Sun (funds have been raised through Internet, via Pledgemusic).

The composers’ art of songwriting literally explodes through all 13 tracks of this simple, soft and magnificent tunes. Bare harmonies (Western Sun, In The Night Pasture), delicate and sophisticated arrangements (Step Inside) contribute to create both intimacy and self-sacrifice. Sometimes close to rock (Lily Darlin’), sometimes country (The Boy Who Could Not Sleep) or deeply folk (Make It Out Alive, Cowboys and Indians), these short songs are as immersive as given to the public, track by track, to exhibit a global work of art. Sherry Rich and Ashley Naylor’s intense and freed-from-all-limits vocals remind one of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel (Mama, Why You Hurt Me) and Genesis’ first albums while sounding a little psychedelic (Brother Don’t Cry For Me). All these stunning, innocent and subversive sources of attraction, which are quite rare in actual music, unite and hypnotize each listener.

But, above all, what gives Western Sun a more powerful inner strength can be found in the double meanings of the lyrics, which are quite obvious; these particular stories can be considered as accounts and, also, human metaphors helping words to be more and more captivating. Is it a song about fever or child abuse (The Boy Who Could Not Sleep)? Female submission or a story about the nineteenth-century Golden Rush (Make It Out Alive)? Everyone will finds personal answers and meanings all through the record, as well as a close emotion in every track, always keeping one guessing and leading to many different listenings and appropriations. Thus, the album is a lyrically and musically total success; talking about confidence and human state of mind, The Grapes invites us, through brilliant and dark tones, to rediscover it and contemplate oursselves, then begin a kind of harmony psychoanalysis of one’s Ego and It. In a way, get our personal place around the duet’s opus.

Western Sun is a musical introspection and a great collection of songs, telling stories about the last 15 years the duet has spent working and composing, living and going through lifetime experiences. They both invite us to share them and let us talk about ours; it is an offer no one can refuse.

US singer/ songwriter Amy Black‘s new album is a initiatory journey, a spiritual quest giving brand new premises to the traditional American music. For those of you who think that americana songs are not interesting, the word itself being considered as an artistic rag bag full of many styles, the artist disregards all of it and goes far beyond all frontiers, only holding her guitar and in company of a few but determined musicians.

It is so good to hear such eternal balads, all finding their roots in the cosmopolitan heritage of the singer’s country. Though Nobody Knows You is a blues-rock track which is apparently giving some hints of what is going to happen next, I’m Home takes us back to quiet and conveniently pleasing tunes, so much Amy Black‘s voice is pure, magnificent, engaging and also giving birth to a fabulous round trip. A few acoustic guitars, a discrete bass, simple drums, an organ and a piano are the only necessary companions to travel from one place to another, on deserted and lonely roads. Each one of them has its own way to express itself and shine, thanks to scrupulously disseminated solos all over the whole LP. Country and melancholic vocal duets (such as the astonishing moving song Alabama) are like short breaks before walking again, over and over, going on, finding the way home and hanging out its toque.

Because it is what This Is Home is all about: through musical anecdotes, Amy Black invites each one of us to read her secret diary and talks about her journey through all the landscapes she has been visiting for years. She tells one about different places (These Walls Are Falling Down), still thanks to a precious and straight writing talent. While she has left to find herself, confront her demons and finally be disembodied in order to fill her soul up with brand new ideas and thoughts, she finally comes back, tired, but amazingly free. All the time she has spent in the wilderness is melodically composed and sung with words written on napkins, then this artistic union grows more and more and becomes an inner language. This symbol is in everybody’s mind throughout all the songs of the album, as each listener takes his/ her own place in the peaceful but determined procession, among others (Stronger, Speed of the Sound of Loneliness). Thus, once the crowd, lead by Amy Black, gets where it belongs, one feels stronger, relieved, tired and deeply but peacefully scarred.

This Is Home is a beautiful intimate musical testimony, motivating one to only do one thing: hit the road, go on and meet different human beings who certainly will change one’s life forever. And, on this way, the only songs to listen to are Amy Black‘s.

Mark Kozelek‘s longevity remains a particular example in the history of the last decades of independent music. For 25 years now, this man, in a band or alone, has managed to maintain a particular fascination for his fans as much as for those who aim to discover his work. In times when others would have become exhausted or simply satisfied in doing the same thing again and again, Sun Kil Moon‘s singer and guitarist, with Benji, adds another brick to the perfect house he has been building for so long. And it goes straight to the heart.

One is about to recognize these special moods which make us like Red House Painter’s former leader: his voice still maintains the sensitive strength of a storyteller talking about American stories and melancholic people, memories and family moments (I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love), forgotten and absent friends that one would rather forget about ( the hypnotic end of Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes). Mark Kozelek‘s velvet vocals and his ability to perform low (Truck Driver) and acute tunes (Dogs) take us to simple but deeply beautiful landscapes of the great nation (as on the album cover). But beyond that, he seems to have learnt new lessons from his recent collaboration with Jimmy LaValle (Perils From The Sea, one of the best albums of 2013): his words are supported by choirs which create a feeling of anxiety while listening to these wild and brutal existential moments. A kind though ironic glance at them, like brief musical articles on the last page of a newspaper.

Music is of course inevitably folk, but also shows brand new unexpected ideas from the artist: blues-rock (I love My Dad), funk (Ben’s My Friend and its astonishing saxophone solo), Seventies-like rhyme (Jim Wise) or South American tones (Truck Driver, the most beautiful song of the album). As if, one year after his musical union with The Album Leaf’s composer, the songwriter had wanted to make it last longer, with his own talent, so much their living experiments are amplified by the kind of sensitivity which makes one desperately beg for new songs from him. Pray for Newtown and I Watched the Film the Song Remains the Same (in which the final solo is of upsetting purity and never lets us be aware of the 10-minutes length of the track) carry their creator’s trademark and bring us back to well-known places, although one wishes, more than ever, to lose oneself in brand-new deep, nicely subversive elements, significant of an incredibly eclectic career. Moving close to tears, these new wanderings are a challenge and a slap to the face of potential critics, and also proves, as Mark Eitzel did on his remarkable The Invisible Man LP, that it is always good to question oneself to come back and reinvent; taking so many risks (however perfectly calculated) lays brand new bases for years to come.

Benji is like a fresh beer drunk while sitting on the terrace of a house, lost in the desert lands of rural America, when darkness falls and after a long and hot day working in the fields. Lights and shades point out, but fascinating landscapes are still splendid. Until the next morning.